


Moments In A Time Of War

by mad_martha



Series: The Lodger Series [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU, Drama, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-03
Updated: 2011-07-03
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/218622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mad_martha/pseuds/mad_martha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These are brief snippets, mostly character sketches I suppose.  They're set around the time Harry destroys Voldemort, so it's probably a year or two after Caught Unprepared, but prior to The Lodger by a wide margin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moments In A Time Of War

One: Draco 

This is how he knows things are going badly. 

This place - he will not dignify it with the title 'room' - could not be farther from anything he has ever known before in his life if they had told him it was situated on the moon.  It's horrifying.  Inside, it's a single space less than half the size of his bedroom at the Manor.  Light comes from a single un-shaded and glaring Muggle light bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling.  There's a window, mercifully covered by a thin green curtain (although what lies beyond it can hardly be worse than this) and there's a sink next to the window, with a single cold tap and a dusty tumbler standing on the rim, that looks familiar to him for all the wrong reasons.  Strips of dirty and moulding paper are beginning to peel from the walls and there's a stained carpet on the floor.  Much of the space is taken up by a bed which nothing, _nothing,_ will induce him to lie upon.  Nor will he sit on that mildewed chair in the corner or hang his clothes, such as they are, in the ancient wardrobe that stands against the wall beside the door. 

These are all the amenities that are solely his in this Muggle boarding establishment.  Everything else - namely the bathroom, kitchen and laundry - are shared with several other residents.  And this is where he is expected to live for the foreseeable future.

 _We don't have resources to waste on scum like you anymore_ , the last of his Auror 'guards' had told him.  _We have to concentrate on people who actually matter._   The tone was cool and matter-of-fact, the lack of malice in it striking in contrast to the words.

And then they brought him here. 

Accommodation over the last few months has not exactly been the ambassador's suite in a five star hotel.  He's been moved several times and the conditions have got worse on each occasion, but this is a new low. 

The floor vibrates with the rhythmic thump of alien music played too loudly in the room below.  From the room next door comes a weirdly attenuated sound that reminds him of the noise made by a wizard wireless owned by one of his early guards and kept a couple of rooms away, only … more so.  He can't make sense of either of these noises, but the sound of a quarrel somewhere else in the boarding house is frighteningly familiar; no one ever forgets what it's like to hear a woman being beaten.  It doesn't sound as though anyone is bothering to intervene.

He doesn't dare to either.  He never did.

They told him that his rent in this place is paid for the next two months, but no one mentioned what would happen after that.  He thinks he can guess, though.  His hand goes into the pocket of his second-hand Muggle coat and pulls out a slender length of wood.  They would never have given him this if they'd been intending to come back for him.

He can't stay here.  He _won't_ stay here.  Just standing on this carpet makes him feel ill (and he hadn't thought anything could after all he's seen).  He could use his wand and Apparate away from here - but to where?  It's the middle of winter and it's past eight o'clock at night.  Muggle places might still be open, but wizard shops and facilities are traditional and close at six.  Late-opening pubs and restaurants have closed completely since the Dark Lord made his presence known to the world some months ago.  He has money of his own - just a little, a very little, inherited from his grandmother - but it's wizard money and he can't access it without going to Gringotts, who won't be open until the morning.  He doesn't know if they'll let him access his funds even then.  Who knows what measures were taken against his finances since his trial?  There's so much he hasn't been allowed to know in the time he's been kept in safe-houses.

He can't stay here.  But equally, it seems, he can't leave.  He has nowhere to go and nothing in his pockets to finance a change in that situation, except for his wand.  He looks at it again, rubbing his thumb over a spot on the handle that has been worn smooth by years of use. 

There has to be a way that he can use his wand to improve his circumstances, but his brain doesn't seem to want to supply him with the answer.  This is a Muggle boarding house, a cold little voice whispers inside his head.  Using his wand here could bring the wrath of the Ministry down on him. 

Except that the Ministry has been infiltrated by the Dark Lord's minions and the Aurors and MLEs who would normally respond to breaches in the law are occupied elsewhere - trying to save the people worth saving.  Which reminds him of the reason for him being in safe-houses in the first place.  The Ministry is not the only body that could be monitoring his wand.  He had an Auror guard for a reason.

And this is how he knows things are going badly.  He can't take a step forward without taking another back.  He's supposed to be under house-arrest, but his guards have been redeployed elsewhere.  He can't stay in this room, but he can't leave because he has nowhere to go.  He has money but cannot access it; he has a wand but doesn't dare use it. 

He refused to sell out to Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix, but he is already a traitor in the eyes of the Dark Lord.

Standing in the middle of this unforgiving hellhole, Draco Malfoy is held frozen by the multitude of impossibilities that is his existence now.  He doesn't want to die, but he doesn't know how he will live.

He wonders if this is how Harry Potter must feel knowing that the Dark Lord is out there.

 

Two: Ron

Having nothing to do but wait is the worst torture he can imagine.  The clock is ticking down the minutes, and his brain synchronises with the steady sound as he sees the steps of the plan in his mind's eye and mentally crosses them off one by one, over and over again.

 _Step One: Gather with your team at the pre-arranged place._

Some godawful spot just outside Hogsmeade, in their case.  They've been laying a careful trail of plausible misinformation for more than a week now and as the final player Luna Lovegood arrives, she confirms that Known Subject Number 2 is following it.

This is just _their_ Step One, of course.  Elsewhere, other Order members are gathering in various places, having laid equally careful trails for their designated Known Subjects.  Hermione is on the case of Known Subject Number 5, for example - Fenrir Greyback.

 _Step Two: Take your positions._

He pauses in his restless pacing to peer out of the grubby window of the hut where he's stationed.  Out there are hidden three other members of the team - inside a damaged tomb, behind a huge compost heap, concealed inside the church porch.  The little cemetery is bleak in the middle of an unusually chilly October and in the middle of it, highly visible, is the bait - one Neville Longbottom, calmly working on clearing the encroaching weeds and debris from his family's plot.  He's in no hurry; his hands are steady and his eyes are focussed on his work.  He knows he's the bait, of course.  A few short years ago he would have been terrified, but today he relishes the vital role he plays.  He's been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

They've all been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

Somewhere out there, many miles away, the woman Ron wants to marry has already taken her own position along with the handful of their friends who have volunteered for that particular mission.  Like Ron, initially she was reluctant - not because of the Known Subject or the danger involved, but because she didn't want to be separated from her two closest friends at this time.  But she's doing it anyway because she knows - as Ron knows - that it's vitally important that Known Subjects 2 through 7 are removed as swiftly as possible for the overall success of the mission.  To that end, she has offered herself as bait for Greyback, knowing that he of all the Subjects won't be able to resist the temptation of this one of Death Eaters' three Most Wanted.

If it all goes as planned - if she survives this carefully planned encounter -

But Ron doesn't allow his mind to travel further down that path.  They are not the only ones taking risks tonight.  There are seven teams out there, each with its particular bait, waiting to take out its particular Known Subject.

And somewhere out there, many miles in another direction again, waits the third of their trio.  He, backed up by the largest of the teams, is targeting Known Subject Number 1.  (Some in the Order object to this designation as almost trivialising the nature of the Subject in question, but Dumbledore insists that he should receive no special treatment except in the way he will be lured into their particular trap.)  Ron has watched his friend over the past couple of months as he grimly prepares for the rapidly approaching moment.  His role seems deceptively simple, despite the necessary constant practice over the past months.  The weapon is such a small, alien thing to use against such a creature.

Anyone who believes his role is simple is grossly mistaken however.  He is the ultimate bait, after all.  For nothing and no one else would this particular Subject bestir himself.

Ron is carefully not thinking of this encounter either.  If he and Neville and the others in their team are successful, they should be in time to join the final encounter and see the result for themselves.

Ron's reflection in the dirt-crusted glass stares back at him like a stranger for a moment.  His eyes are hard and cold and older than any young man's should be, and part of him will be mildly disconcerted by this memory later.  He doesn't have time to ponder it now.

 _Step Three: Strike your Subject to kill._

She's coming; he can feel it in his bones.  Feeling quite calm all of a sudden, he walks softly across to the door of the sexton's hut and draws the folds of Harry's Invisibility Cloak around him before slipping outside and going to stand by the gateway to the cemetery.

They've set up a network of wards to trap her as soon as she steps through that gateway.  There's a great deal of confidence at headquarters that this will be sufficient to contain her long enough to despatch her, but that confidence alone is enough to convince Ron and Harry - and probably Neville too - that the wards probably _won't_ be enough after all, not nearly.  Confidence is misplaced with this Subject.

Hence the Invisibility Cloak, the detail of the plan that only Ron and Harry know about.  She would underestimate him anyway, of course - people always do - but the element of surprise will be an additional bit of security.  She's not going to get Neville or any other member of his team if he can help it.

His chess-player's mind is calculating his every move with mathematical precision now, and although she doesn't yet know it Bellatrix Lestrange has already been outmanoeuvred by the young man she laughingly believes to be no more than Harry Potter's drummer-boy. 

And as a whirlwind cloud of dust announces her arrival in the high street of Hogsmeade, Ron Weasley smiles.

 

Three: Harry

He supposes that at some point the full horror of this scene will hit him.  There are bodies everywhere, more dead than there are wounded, and those who came here upon the heels of their own missions are now slowly moving among them, checking for signs of life, rendering assistance, gently straightening and covering those beyond help.  A pathetically small group of Aurors are doing their best to secure the scene and gather evidence; an even smaller group of Obliviators hover on the perimeter nervously, poised to act if their presence is noticed at this most exposed and public of Muggle tourist attractions.

In spite of all this, in spite of knowing that all of these people are friends of his, he cannot feel a thing.  So many of them died before his eyes, including Dumbledore and McGonagall ... Oliver Wood deliberately took a killing curse meant for him.  He should surely feel something for Oliver, whose bed he has shared more often than not over the past year. But there's nothing at the core of him.  _Shock_ they will tell him later.  Perhaps it is. 

Perhaps. 

And certainly he should feel something at the defeat of his nemesis if nothing else, he thinks, as he stares down at the withered husk sprawled at his feet.  Curiously, no one else shows much interest in the body of the defeated Dark Lord, but there is a sense of rightness in this when he considers the matter.  Almost anyone else is more important than what's left of this creature.  All the same, something should be done about the body.  It won't do for it to be left here or, worse, for it to disappear.  God only knows what will happen if the lingering remnants of his supporters should get hold of it.

He reaches for his wand and it's only then that he realises he's still holding the gun that ended it all.  It takes three or four attempts for him to check the chamber is empty (he's paranoid about safety where the revolver is concerned, for wizards don't understand firearms at all) and when he's done one of the younger Aurors is standing at his shoulder, holding out a thick parchment evidence envelope with hands that shake a little. 

He snaps the chamber back into place, puts the safety catch on out of habit and slips the gun into the evidence bag.  He reminds her not to lose it, his voice distant and scratchy to his own ears, and turns back to the corpse.

No burial for this one.  A clean burning, he thinks, and scatter the ashes afterwards.  The top of this block of granite will be a good place to do it.  He doubts this is the first cremation held within the great ring of sarsen stones anyway, although after this it may well be the last.  He drags himself to his feet, feeling a hundred years old, and finds his wand.

Activity slows to a halt when the others see him levitating the corpse onto the stone.  Fiendfyre will be quick and clean, although it carries its own curse; he paces wearily around the granite block, marking out warded restrictions so that the spell can't blaze out of control, then steps back, aware as he does so that his friends have joined him.  Hermione is talking about damage to a Scheduled Ancient Monument but the vague way she says it lends little conviction to the words, and Ron is a grim but supportive pillar of silence. 

At the last moment he hesitates.  He finds himself staring at the bundle of stick-like limbs shrouded in tattered black robes, at the sunken-eyed and hairless skull with its reptilian features.  Voldemort looks so much smaller than the space he occupies in Harry's nightmares.  When he's gone it will truly be over, and for the first time Harry wonders what will take the Dark wizard's place in his life.  There are great echoing caverns inside him already where others have left him behind.  But one cannot hold on to dead men, least of all this one.

Harry raises his wand, feeling the weight of every death behind it, and when he speaks the word that makes flames leap across Voldemort's corpse it feels like something deep inside him rips itself asunder, scattering fragments of him far and wide across Salisbury Plain.

 

 **  
_~_   
**   
**_finis ~_**


End file.
